System Spot Light

Club Has Partnered With The Cloud-Based Ticketing Platform To Support Their Digital Ambitions

London, Lausanne, Paris, Madrid – 12 October 2017: English rugby club and current Aviva Premiership Champions Exeter Chiefs have appointed SecuTix as its official ticketing technology partner.

Following a competitive tender process, SecuTix, the global provider of a ticketing engagement platform for the sports, culture and entertainment industries, has begun work across the Chiefs’ two businesses: the rugby club itself and their stadium, Sandy Park. Alongside being the home ground for the rugby club, Sandy Park is a successful conference and banqueting centre.

The Club will use the cloud-based SecuTix 360° software to:

Grow their online ticketing business

Increase the average basket value through both upselling and cross-selling

Develop deeper relationships with their corporate audience through an improved hospitality customer journey

Gain a 360-degree understanding of their fans and be able to engage with them across digital and mobile touchpoints

Tony Rowe OBE, Chairman & CEO of Exeter Chiefs, said: “We wanted to partner with a modern technology ticketing company that could support our digital ambitions for both the Club and Sandy Park. The SecuTix team impressed us with their experience of ticketing and the rugby sector. Together we will use data to better understand what the fans want, create a first-class experience for them and drive a commercial return for the Club.”

Frédéric Longatte, CEO of SecuTix commented: “We’re very much looking forward to working with such a top-flight team as the Chiefs. We’re confident that our SecuTix 360° platform, which is delivered as ‘software as a service’ (SaaS), will benefit the Club across not just ticketing, but also CRM and digital marketing. It’s exciting times with plans in place to extend Sandy Park to 20, 000 seats and SecuTix will support the Club throughout this period of expansion to help them realise their vision for the future.”

Exeter Chiefs sell over 200,000 tickets annually. It is the second Premiership Club to partner with SecuTix, Saracens being the first back in 2016.

About SecuTix

SecuTix is a European technology provider of a Ticketing Engagement Platform that helps organisations boost ticket sales and enhance audiences’ experience before, during and after live events. Our product, SecuTix 360°, is a cloud-based platform that combines ticketing and marketing functionality, and is offered as a white label SaaS service. Used by the largest sport clubs and stadiums, live entertainment businesses, and leading museums and cities across Europe, SecuTix manages the yearly sales of 30 million tickets. Among our clients are Opéra National de Paris, UEFA, Centre Pompidou, Aspro Parks, Saracens RFC, Paléo Festival, Musée Picasso Paris and more. A daughter company of the ELCA Group, SecuTix has a local presence in Switzerland, France, Spain and the UK.

There are systems that are relatively new, ones seem to pop-up every few months. Conversely there are suppliers (and systems) that seem to have been around since the age of computerised ticketing. I had always considered Ticketsolve to be one the newest on the block.

On a recent visit to Dublin, I caught up ordertramadol with Paul Fadden about all things ticketing, I must admit to being shocked that Ticketsolve has just turned ten! I remember back in the day when they hit the market with quite a splash. Anyhow, here’s a look back in their eyes on the journey so far, with some fun facts and figures too!

Some Impressive Facts and Figures from 10 Years of Ticketsolve

10 years ago the arts industry was in a sort of revival, with Tony Blair renewing the government’s commitment to the arts and culture sector (March 2007 speech). At this same time, in the post dot com bubble, the technology sector was ramping up – fast.

But even with that revival (or perhaps because of it), and the rapid rise of technology, there was a sense of frustration within the arts. Why were so many theatres, venues and festivals getting left behind? Technology was moving forward, but arts organisations were being left to deal with unwieldy software systems at best – or no system at all.

Into that gap, stepped Ticketsolve. The brainchild of Sean and Brian Hanly, Ticketsolve was one of the first companies to recognise that theatres, venues and festivals needed a reliable ticketing platform, that was also scalable and affordable. Being software guys, they understood quickly that cloud technology (software as a service or SaaS), was the way forward.

While today cloud software is everywhere, 10 years ago, that certainly wasn’t the case.

“Prior to the proliferation of online software solutions, businesses had to make a huge upfront investments to have locally hosted in-house ticketing solutions.” says, Sean Hanly, CEO of Ticketsolve. With a background in programming and software consultancy Sean had seen the problems with locally hosted solutions first hand.

“Maintenance costs were incredibly high, and staff could not carry out remote tasks, set up remote box office kiosks, etc. – it was a massive overhead (and headache). Software-as-a-Service addressed all of these issues – SaaS allows organisations to get professional software at a reasonable cost. There is no costly upfront investment, no additional hardware, and no downtime,” notes Sean.

SaaS was a huge advantage for Ticketsolve early on. Adding to that was their collaborative approach to building out the functionality of the software.

Paul Fadden, Managing Director, noted, “We have always been customer focused. Today, we continue to listen and work with customers on the direction of the platform. There is no guessing – we talk to customers constantly to understand what their needs are now – and what they need into the future.”

This close level of customer collaboration has meant Ticketsolve quickly grew into more than just a ticketing platform – customers now view it as the heart of their organisations.

This year, Ticketsolve celebrates it’s 10 year anniversary. Today, Ticketsolve is one of the leaders in ticketing in the UK and Ireland, with over 240 customers.

“Our future focus, and close collaboration with customers has led to fantastic growth for the company,” says Paul, “51 customers have joined the Ticketsolve family in the last year alone. As we further develop the platform’s functionality, we anticipate strong and continued growth.”

So what does the future hold for Ticketsolve?

SaaS ticketing platforms now dominate, with 80% of inventory being booked online with up to 60% through smartphones and mobiles.

“We have an obligation to our customers to continually innovate, and strive to make their lives easier.” says, Sean. “To that end, we are focused on engineering a lot of automation tools and integrations into our platform, which we believe will fundamentally change ticketing – and ultimately make our customers busy work lives easier.”

The last 10 years have seen Ticketsolve emerge in the era of SaaS, bringing fresh thinking to arts organisation, to collaborating intimately with customers building a platform that gets beyond ticketing and the box office.

With new system developments, and new customers joining the ever growing community of arts organisations and festivals, Ticketsolve seems to be achieving what it set out to do – bring enterprise level ticketing to the arts community.

London, UK (January 6, 2017)—Karl Vosper, Managing Director of the TopTix UK office announces that Ingresso and three other technology companies have been certified as official SRO integration partners. SRO (Standing Room Only) is an all-in-one web delivered software solution for ticket sales, marketing, and CRM.

Ingresso has created a real-time sales integration with SRO, allowing TopTix customers to sell their ticketing inventory, via Select your Seat, through Ingresso’s vast Global Distribution System with sales channels including Amazon Tickets, Disney Tickets, From the Box-Office and Lastminute.com.

SRO customers have complete control over which tickets are offered through which sales channels, at what time, and at which price / commission structure.

Removing the need for manual allocations, the Ingresso API interconnectivity brings ease of rapid sales channel expansion to reach audiences that may have otherwise been inaccessible.

Mel Dearle, Sales Director of Ingresso said:

“Our technical development team found the TopTix UK team helpful throughout the API integration process—and the SRO system performed. Our first connection was to the English National Opera—and sales via our integrated distribution network rocketed by 650% since connection. The venue controls the price, commissions and access and API ticketing offers truly dynamic pricing opportunities. We look forward to further TopTix venue connections and discussing the support and marketing reach we can offer to the box-office and right’s holders.”

The other three agencies, include:

Catch (UK)
Catch has created a seamless integration between Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) public web interface and SRO. The modern visitor engagement interface enables a unified, responsive end-to-end sales journey for ticketing, events, activities, memberships and more, including upselling and Gift Aid functionality.

Stunn (UK)
Stunn took the online booking processes for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre websites out of iFrames to enable full functionality with the SRO ticketing system. The solution is fully responsive and includes mobile seat selection, upselling and membership recruitment capabilities and is also trackable via dashboard analytics.

Zicht Online (The Netherlands)
Zicht Online developed TicketTrigger as an alternative front end to SRO for online ticketing. TicketTrigger uses the extensive SOAP API of SRO allowing customers to apply custom design, flows and functionality in the ticketing process.

The integration partners program enables best-in-class web and application developers the ability to efficiently extend the capabilities of the SRO platform and provides TopTix clients with a referable list of proven service providers and solutions. Karl Vosper, who initiated the program for TopTix, commented, “We carefully evaluate each partner and project to ensure that every integration is of the highest quality. We seek developers with proven experience in the ticketing and CRM industry who have a deep understanding of client needs and present forward-thinking solutions to our rapidly expanding portfolio of clients.”

Interested clients and prospects may learn more about the development partner program at http://toptix.com/partners/. Vosper concluded, “Our ultimate goal is to give TopTix clients easy access to the most robust features possible to drive their business forward, backed by technology partners carefully selected and supported by TopTix.”

TopTix continues to evaluate technology companies from around the world seeking to join the integration partners program. Program benefits include access to the SRO API, documentation, sample integration code, training hours with the TopTix tech team and a testing environment hosted by TopTix.

I was delighted to attend two days of Visitor attraction talks last week at the Tower Bridge Experience as a guest of the Access Group.

A number of former colleagues from many years ago, now work at Access and we crossed paths when they completed the Functionality Builder earlier in the year, followed by being selected in a procurement project run by Helen Dunnett in the summer.

I presented two sessions, one on the “venue vendor relationship” – a fun session looking at why we lose sight of the fact that we are in a business relationship and we need to avoid emotions being part of our decision making process.

This session was followed up the excellent Chris Webb of Synurgy looking at the key stages and milestones of procurement, from business analysis to examining where the money comes from and goes to in the organisation. Despite being a bit of a bus man’s holiday for me, a large chunk of the audience really got a great deal of information and insight.

Chris Webb of Synurgy talking through visual representations of revenues

At the user-group the following day I presented some “cross-industry trends” to get the day started, looking at a report card style of how Sports and Performing arts compare in areas such as Revenue Management and Commercial Partnerships, along with some general CRM tips, trick and pitfalls.

I’ll save a write up of some VERY interesting product updates they are working on for another post.

However, there is a repeat of the open, free to attend sessions next week at the Scotch Whiskey Experience in Edinburgh on 19th October. Places are limited REGISTER HERE.

Arts and cultural professionals share local insights on global stage

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD | September 2, 2016 — Tessitura Network, Inc. proudly announces that talks from the recent Tessitura Learning & Community Conference (TLCC) are now available to the public for free online viewing. Speakers include Annie Burridge of Opera Philadelphia; Nik Honeysett of Balboa Park Online Collaborative; Sherri Prentiss of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Rand Suffolk of the High Museum of Art; Alida Szabo of Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Heather Walker of the Royal Opera House; and executive leadership from the Tessitura Network. All videos are available at www.youtube.com/TessituraNetwork.

Peabody Award-winning radio producer Julie Burstein, who is also a TED speaker and the best-selling author of Spark: How Creativity Works, moderated a keynote panel entitled “Catalyst Collaborations: Crossing Genres to Ignite Creativity.” Sherri Prentiss, Rand Suffolk and Alida Szabo spoke about how cross-genre collaborations lead to new opportunities for audience development, community engagement and the unexpected.

The conference also featured three presentations as part of Tessitura’s Innovator Series, a regular program showcasing innovation and best practices in the business of arts and culture. These talks are presented quarterly, and TLCC offered the opportunity for the speakers—Annie Burridge, Nik Honeysett and Heather Walker—to present in front of over 1,800 attendees. You can find the entire “Tessitura’s Innovator Series” playlist on our YouTube channel.

The Tessitura Learning & Community Conference took place August 7-11 in National Harbor, MD. Now in its 16th year, TLCC drew a record 1,882 arts and cultural professionals from all over the world. The annual conference is the world’s largest cross-genre, cross-functional gathering where arts and cultural professionals come to broaden their knowledge of the uses of Tessitura Software, learn about the latest products and services, attain information about future technology and share knowledge, insights and best practices with one another.

Jack Rubin, Tessitura Network President, commented, “This Tessitura Network global gathering is undoubtedly the best place to be every year for learning, knowledge sharing, networking, collaborating, strategic thinking, innovation, and trend watching. Our business model, a nonprofit company serving the nonprofit arts and cultural sector, makes this company and this community unique.”

About the Tessitura Network
The Tessitura Network provides a unified CRM database that offers specialized functionality for ticketing/admissions, memberships, fundraising, business intelligence, marketing, education and more. Tessitura also offers complementary products and services including a hosted deployment option, a powerful e-commerce solution, mobile-optimized web experience and expert consulting from basic training through enterprise-level strategy. Organizations of all sizes are empowered to use Tessitura in a way that best suits their needs—either out of the box or as a platform for innovation.

The Tessitura Network was founded in 2001 by seven organizations who required a cross-functional system that was tailor-made for the arts and cultural sectors. To this day it is proud to be a member owned and governed nonprofit with a self-sufficient business model. As such, its users play a critical input role regarding the evolution of its products and services. Now, with nearly 200 staff members, the Tessitura Network continues to add new arts and cultural organizations to the community at a record pace. The Network serves over 550 organizations worldwide including theatres, museums, dance companies, performing arts centers, attractions, operas, festivals, symphonies, galleries, film centers and more. It operates in eight countries—Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

AudienceView is continuing to forge a strong presence in the UK market for both arts and sports organizations – we see all the innovative ways you and your organizations both push the envelope and also stay true to preserving traditions that go back in time.

As one of the world’s top 3 entertainment markets, our commitment to you remains high. Please read our official announcement for the appointment of Jeff Koets as Interim Managing Director for UK – we are excited to continue to make our team on the ground stronger and our service levels top notch!

About AudienceView

AudienceView is a complete entertainment business solutions provider. With over $2 billion in annual transactions, our innovative and engaging software is helping more than 550 venues in 15 countries deliver exceptional shopping, in-venue and customer experiences. The self-serve, e-commerce, ticketing and events management portals enable success for events of all sizes or types. Learn more atwww.audienceview.com, or connect with the company on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s always great to hear of continuing success and improvement at system providers.

We were delighted to catch up with Karl Vosper, MD of Toptix UK this week to hear how their continued increase in staff had been helped by advertising the positions with us, and how those staff were settling in.
It’s not just staff that have been increasing at Toptix, with a range of new clients committing to their ground-breaking system SRO4.
These include conversions from the Patron Edge, or SRO3, Ipswich borough Council and the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, as well as new additions to the user base, in the British Library (consolidation of a separate Ticketing and Membership system) and Birmingham University.
Karl Vosper commented “It is fantastic to be able to continually increase our team as well as the product’s capabilities”
He continued “the announcement of further sites selecting SRO4 is testament to the quality of our solution and teams, which the new team members will continue to grow and strengthen”

Implementation and Training Services is responsible for successfully onboarding the many new Tessitura-
powered organizations. In addition, as needed, this team provides on-going system training, consulting

The introduction of ProVenue® is a continuation of the longstanding partnership with the historic venue that dates back more than 20 years

Tuesday 22 March, 2016 – Milton Keynes, UK – Tickets.com, the industry leading provider of global ticketing and marketing solutions, has today announced the introduction of the latest version of its ticketing system, ProVenue®, for the world renowned opera house Semperoper, in Dresden, Germany.

A client since 1993, Semperoper will utilise ProVenue® alongside the existing technology previously implemented by Tickets.com to manage all aspects of its ticketing; this includes online sales with a wide range of advanced features, as well as customer selection, data cleansing and reporting.

As Tickets.com’s most advanced ticketing system, ProVenue® is a full service, integrated ticketing solution that puts users in complete control of their ticketing operation. It enables venues to sell tickets to consumers under their own brand and capture, access and own consumer data, providing a 360° view of the buying habits and preferences of their patrons.

Semperoper will also continue to use Tickets.com’s integrated e-mail system

Alongside ProVenue®, Semperoper will also continue to use Tickets.com’s integrated e-mail system, which permits the venue to not only manage its data effectively but also build, send and track HTML campaigns.

increasing number of clients taking advantage of its intuitive design, clever inventory management and ability to seamlessly integrate with other applications

Already well-established throughout the US, ProVenue® was launched internationally in 2015. The National Speedway Stadium and the entire British Basketball League were some of the first to take advantage of the robust platform in UK market and the advanced ticketing platform is also being used across the globe in dozens of leading performing arts venues and professional sports clubs. ProVenue’s® popularity continues to grow in North America, Europe and Australia, with an ever increasing number of clients taking advantage of its intuitive design, clever inventory management and ability to seamlessly integrate with other applications.

Commenting on the launch of ProVenue®, Doris Schneider, head of sales and service at Semperoper Dresden, said: “Having worked with Tickets.com for more than 20 years now, we continue to be impressed by its ongoing product innovation and development, so the update to ProVenue® was a natural migration for Semperoper.

“We’ve worked closely with the team throughout the development and testing phase to ensure that the system is meeting the requirements of the venue and we’ve been really pleased with our experience of ProVenue® so far; we are very confident that it will provide us with a strong platform to better engage with our existing and prospective customers and we are looking forward to continuing our longstanding partnership with Tickets.com.”

Derek Palmer, Tickets.com’s managing director and executive vice president, international, said: “Today’s announcement is a significant development in the roll out of ProVenue®, as not only does it indicate the growing portfolio of customers worldwide that are moving across to new solutions, but it also represents the expansion of our technical infrastructure throughout Europe.

“Semperoper is a fantastic venue and showcase for how Tickets.com systems continue to evolve with customer and industry requirements and trends; we remain ever focused on evolving and revolutionising technology and the ticketing landscape to deliver a seamless ticketing experience for our customers and their clients.”

Built in 1841, Semperoper hosts over 700 events and welcomes more than 400,000 visitors every year; a popular opera house widely renowned for its star-studded performances by the Saxon State Opera and Orchestra, the venue has a long history of premieres, including major works by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

Best Union enters US market with enta Ticketing Solutions

London (18 January 2016) Following the acquisition of the global intellectual property rights (“IPR”) and source code (“Source”) for enta Ticketing Solutions (“enta”) in March 2015, Best Union UK Limited today entered in to a multi-year licensing agreement with its US counterpart, Best Union USA, LLC, to sell, implement and support enta in the US market.

John Gibson, Managing Director, Best Union UK Limited said: “With existing clients in United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Scandinavia, Netherlands and the Middle East, this initiative builds upon Best Union’s strategic vision of enta becoming a global product”. Luca Montebugnoli, Chairman and CEO, Best Union Company S.p.A. said: “As global licensor of enta, Best Union has clearly identified new commercial opportunities which our US operations are perfectly placed to capitalise upon.

Furthermore, today’s agreement reflects our on-going commitment; both to our existing, or future, clients as well as the continuous development of the product.